1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to monitoring a target. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for monitoring a target using a radar.
2. Background Art
It is desired to be able to continuously and unambiguously perform radar tracking of surface targets and surface moving targets for several minutes to locate, target, and/or engage the moving targets. Conventional radar surface moving target trackers typically drop or confuse tracks after only a short time. This is because targets: stop, start, make quick turns, have low target radial velocity, have terrain screening, etc, which can lead to target detection drop-out. Hence, continuous attention by a human operator is currently required to stitch these short track segments back together.
One computer-based technique used to track targets has been surface motion target indication (SMTI) techniques. However, similar to the problems described above, this technique only produces useful information if a target moves and then stops. This technique cannot be used to track targets that move, stop, change direction, move, stop, etc.
It has been suggested that synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging techniques can be used to track moving targets for extended lengths of time and through various movements of the target. However, even when SAR imaging techniques are used, moving targets within SAR images are generally blurred, and thus hard to accurately detect.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method that would allow for accurate monitoring of a target position regardless of the movement of the target, which also reduces or substantially eliminates a requirement for a human operator to monitor generated images.